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DIY Magnetic Dragon/Fairy Chess Pieces

Making my own magnetic variant pieces02/08/2025
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I have a lovely Italian Travel Chess Set; it is all wood, well crafted and also... magnetic. I felt however, there was one thing missing: Dragons.

So I set about designing and creating my own Variant pieces in keeping with, or as close to in keeping with, the style of my Italian Travel set.

Now, whilst I have made Variant pieces (or "fairy" pieces in CV terms) before, usually my work would not stretch to much more than something like chopping the crown off a King and calling it a Cleric ~ or whatever it wants to be called.

I have plenty of things like Seirawan Elephants, Hawks, Jesters and various other items like conkers and gem stone dice which I would usually be quite happy utilizing instead.

Let alone make something magnetic.

However attempt I did and well... here they are.

My lovely Dragons... but of course they can be used as any kind of "fairy" piece. The variant I was creating them for I abandoned in the end for something else I have in the works... BUT they make great additions to my Italian travel set.

They are wooden discs, with magnet & felt underside, a glued semi-sphere cap, two-toned natural wood/black Indian ink.

The magnet used is one of those very thin disc magnets found in travel Chess sets, whereby I removed the Chess piece sticker. Originally the plan was to carve out a 'bed' for the magnet to sit in, but this proved too fiddly, besides the wood is very hard.

So instead I decided to just stick the magnet to the base and cut-out a 'ring' of red felt to glue around it ~ thus embedding the magnet inside the felt ring instead. This proved to work extremely well.

Having never made magnetic Chess pieces before, personally I think they are fabulous!

Thank you for reading.

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